Roots and Branches

The caption of the above photo by Gabrielle Shiowzawa in the Moapa Valley Progress reads, “Sierra Bunker works to start a fire with flint and steel while Micaela Leavitt looks on at LDS Logandale Stake Girl’s Camp last week.” That made me smile for reasons that may need a little explaining. The last names Bunker and Leavitt are extremely common among southern Nevada Mormons. Further, the two names belong together: when I began reading and saw the name Bunker I thought of the name Leavitt before I reached it a dozen words later. For the Twelfth Census conducted in June of 1900, Harry H. Church enumerated 241 people living in Bunkerville, Nevada (see below), among which there were 31 Bunkers and 66 Leavitts, counting only those bearing those two last names and not including several married daughters and their husbands and children. Among all the girls of Bunkerville in 1900, though, there was not a single Sierra or Micaela. Would that all new names were as pleasing to the ear and orthographic mind as those of these young fire makers.

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From the autobiography of Edward Bunker:

Having seen by the spirit of the Lord the necessity and blessings of the United Order, I labored for two or three years with my family and neighbors and friends, and counciled with President Brigham Young previous to making a settlement on the Rio Virgin, fifty miles south of St. George. President Young told me I could go any place in the south, but said repeatedly not to go north. So, having gathered a sufficient number, including Dudley and Lemuel Leavitt and families, J. [G.] W. Lee, S.C. Crosby, E. Bunker, Jr., and families, others joined us later on, we were organized as a company the first of January, 1877, at Santa Clara. We left there soon after and reached what was then known as Mesquite, but that was afterwards named Bunkerville.